research

My schedule is here.

I am mainly interested in the application of concepts of statistical physics to earthquakes. I take this approach to understand the fundamental principles of earthquake dynamics and to assess time dependent hazard and predictability.

This means that I focus on earthquake populations (seismicity patterns) and their evolution in space and time rather than the physics of individual earthquakes or the propagation of seismic waves. The latter subjects belong to classical seismology while my main interest might be called statistical seismology. However, I am also involved in classical seismology, being in charge of our seismological equipment and our observatory for example.

Geoinformatics is my other focus. Roughly speaking, this subject deals with the application of principles and methods of computer science to geoscientific problems. Especially in connection with earthquakes, there are important issues in visualisation, analysis of spatially referenced data and the integration of such disparate data sets as hypocenters, seismic profiles and geological models for example. I loosely associate geostatistics to geoinformatics as both are linked through the principles and possibilities of modern geographical information systems (GIS).

Please see the pages on my research group Statistical Geophysics and Geoinformatics, my projects and lectures etc. for more info.

Here you can take a look at the current global earthquake population. And this is a listing of the most recent significant events.

Clicking on the left marginal image gives you an animation of the spatio-temporal evolution of seismic activity (gridded number of events per cell per year) for Southern California for 1984 - 2000. This data was used in my paper "Decomposing Spatio-Temporal Seismicity Patterns".